Uncle Crawford also crossed the ocean, leaving his wife and children in America. The slight trouble in his eye grew gradually worse. In the midst of a winter of unprecedented severity Aunt Louisa started to rejoin him. Boston Harbor, whence all Cunard steamers then sailed, was frozen solid. It was necessary to postpone the start until a patch could be cut for the ship through the solid ice. In those days nothing was supposed to prevent the sailing of a Cunarder, but Jack Frost did delay it this once. Mr. Crawford’s illness proved to come from a cancer behind the eye. He died after a long period of suffering. Aunt Louisa, a woman of a most affectionate and sympathetic nature, was much worn with the long nursing and overcome with deep sorrow. She returned to America, dressed in mourning so deep that her sisters thought it excessive and unwholesome. It was said that her widow’s crape veil reached the ground, being double up to the eyes, and that her back never recovered from the bad effects of sustaining this load of mourning. A photograph of her taken at this time was marked “The over-solemn look.” And yet, after a suitable interval of time, she married again, as the inconsolable usually do. Instead of smiling at the fickleness of the human mind, we should remember that for persons of a highly sympathetic nature the loneliness caused by the loss of a beloved helpmeet is almost insupportable. They must, for their own happiness, find another mate. The woman who can live alone, after the loss of her husband, is made of sterner stuff. Lawton’s Valley is on the west side of the island of Aquidneck. On the east side lived Mr. Thomas R. Hazard—“Shepherd Tom,” as he was familiarly called—in the historic mansion of “Vaucluse,” the finest example of Colonial architecture north of Virginia. The grounds were worthy of the house. They were adorned with a labyrinth of box surrounding a sun-dial, and with a number of summer-houses scattered through groves of trees. Mr. Hazard was a remarkable but eccentric person. He had a genuine love for his fellow-man and a hatred of tyranny and oppression. He did great service in securing better treatment for the insane in Rhode Island, as Dorothea Dix and my father did in Massachusetts. After the death of his beautiful wife he became much absorbed in spiritualism. When we first made his acquaintance he was a widower with a delightful family of four daughters and one little boy. The eldest, Fannie, kept house for her father, while a governess instructed the children. Mr. Hazard was the very soul of hospitality. Relations, young and old, made “Vaucluse” their headquarters for long stays during the summer, while friends also paid copious visits.